Via Etienne Laurent/AFP
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly clashed with Democratic cities and states that adopted policies granting “sanctuary” to undocumented immigrants during his first term. Now, both sides are gearing up for the second round.
During Trump’s first term, sanctuary cities refused to allow local law enforcement to share information with federal immigration agents or to hand over immigrants in their custody. This time, many are planning to do the same, even if doing so draws them into a fight with a second Trump administration.
Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a named contributor to its Project 2025 manifesto, hinted at the incoming administration’s plan to make sanctuary jurisdictions targets for “mass deportations.” Homan recently said he expects local law enforcement to cooperate with requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to extradite undocumented immigrants already in their custody, especially when they pose a threat to public safety.
“What mayor or governor doesn’t want a public safety threat outside of their community? He told Center Square. “Their number one responsibility is to protect their community. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Most Democratic leaders, however, have made it clear they will not tolerate the federal government’s overreach on deportations and are preparing to challenge Trump’s immigration policies in court.
“We’re not looking for a fight from the Trump administration, but if he attacks our progress, we will fight back,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told Vox. “Immigrants are an important part of who we are… who we will be.”
How Trump targeted sanctuary cities in his first term
In his first term, Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions has taken two forms: trying to withhold federal funding from them and challenging their policies in court.
In 2017, the Trump administration tried to block sanctuary cities from receiving federal law enforcement grants. Several Democratic state attorneys general have sued, including the state and city of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts and Virginia.
Three Courts of Appeal Different conclusions have been reached On those legal challenges, the US Supreme Court battle system in 2020. After Trump lost the election that year, the Supreme Court Case dismissed At the request of the Biden administration.
This left unresolved the legal questions underlying the case. However, Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and director of the office at New York University School of Law, said the 10th Amendment to the Constitution provides a strong defense for sanctuary cities and states moving forward by protecting states’ rights.
“I don’t think the last word has been heard from the Supreme Court on this issue,” he said. “The Tenth Amendment is the best defense that states and localities still have as to why they should not be punished because they are not fully cooperating with the federal government.”
The Trump administration has also challenged Several California state laws In court, the laws interfered with the administration’s federal immigration enforcement agenda and were unconstitutional.
One of those laws was the “California Law of ValuesSigned by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in 2017. The law prevents state and local police and sheriffs from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in several ways: they can’t ask about a person’s immigration status, they can’t arrest a person based on most. Single immigration violations, share an individual’s personal information with federal immigration agents unless otherwise publicly available, transfer someone local to police custody with federal immigration agents (with some exceptions), and more.
Another California law challenged by the Trump administration was the Immigrant Worker Protection Act, which bars businesses from sharing employee records with immigration agents absent a court order or subpoena. It requires employers to provide workers with notice of upcoming inspections of employment authorization documents, given that undocumented immigrants do not have valid documents.
An appeals court ultimately upheld the VALUES Act but struck down parts of the Immigrant Worker Protection Act that prohibited record-sharing. The US Supreme Court declined to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of that ruling at the time, meaning the law’s ultimate constitutionality remains unresolved.
That means Trump could revive and expand tactics he used last time to target sanctuary cities, and it’s unclear whether they’ll hold up in court, setting the stage for a new round of legal battles in the coming years.
What Trump can do in his second term
Trump is preparing to punish the sanctuary justice system by again interfering with his immigration agenda. Homan is a proposal Recent appearances on talk shows Dr. Phil That the incoming administration will go so far as to prosecute people who try to obstruct federal immigration enforcement.
“If you knowingly conceal or harbor an illegal alien from a police officer, it’s a crime. It’s a crime to obstruct a federal law enforcement officer, so don’t cross that line,” he said. “We’ll present these cases, so you know, don’t test us!”
So are Trump’s advisers It is said to be discussing Reviving and expanding his earlier efforts to condition federal funding to Democratic cities on cooperation with federal immigration agents. While his first administration focused on law enforcement grants, some in his circle hope to tackle other funding streams as well. There’s a potentially wide range to consider as cities and states receive federal money for everything from infrastructure to education.
“Not one iota, not one percent of government spending, should be subsidized,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s pick for vice president of the new “Department of Government Efficiency.” told ABC Last month “Not in sanctuary cities, not in federal aid for people in this country illegally.”
Trump will likely be limited in his efforts to withhold funding by a 1974 law that limits the president. Power to cancel government expenditure unilaterally. If Trump is able to convince Congress to repeal that law or successfully challenge it in court, however, he will likely have more leeway to limit funding to sanctuary cities without congressional approval.
Trump is also said to be looking Revoke the organization policy Preventing ICE arrests in sensitive locations, including schools and churches. He could have done it unilaterally on his first day in office.
How sanctuary cities and states are responding
Many blue state mayors and attorneys general have lined up to support sanctuary policies in Trump’s second term.
Bonta has already vowed to take the administration to court if it tries to withhold funding from sanctuary jurisdictions again.
“This was an unconstitutional attempt to force California against its statehood rights,” he said. “If they try to do it again, we’ll take them to court again, and we’ll argue that our 10th Amendment rights, our statehood rights, prevent that kind of condition on our grant funding.”
Bonta also said that any attempt by Trump to deport US citizens along with their undocumented family members — some The president-elect has floated – would be unconstitutional and bound to violate the due process rights of his mass deportation plan.
most of Democratic leaders echoed that Bonta’s statement, however, has one notable exception: New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has expressed a willingness to work with the Trump administration on deportations.
Adams is It is said to be considering Working with the Trump administration to target “violent individuals.” He insisted he would not go further than that, but immigrant rights groups expressed concern that he would, however, leave New York City’s half a million undocumented immigrants at greater risk for deportation than they were last time Trump. the president
“Mayor Adams has repeatedly demonized undocumented immigrants, from implying that they can be stripped of their due process rights to using them as scapegoats for the city’s budget mismanagement,” the group Make the Road NY said in a statement.
Adams told Fox His legal team will sit down with the president-elect to explore the possibility of an executive order that could override New York City’s sanctuary law. Those laws currently limit information-sharing with federal immigration authorities and prevent the city from honoring requests from ICE to detain people.
He also said his administration is looking at exceptions to the New York City law that prevents an ICE officer from entering city government buildings. That would potentially allow ICE access to the city jail on Rikers Island, as Homan requested.
Adams’ stance reflects the changing politics of immigration among Democrats in recent years as concerns over the southern border have reached record highs and many blue-chip cities have been pressured to absorb busloads of immigrants from border states. Under Biden, Democrats passed a right-wing border security bill that represented a sharp turn in their emphasis on immigrants’ rights and contributions to the country.
“These three and a half years of border arrivals have cast a long shadow over our nation’s immigration policy and politics in ways that cannot be fully appreciated,” Chishti said. “We should welcome every immigrant to our city where the center of gravity of the Democratic Party is not today.”
While other Democrats have not been as vocal as Adams in supporting cooperation with the incoming Trump administration, others have not been entirely vocal in their support of the sanctuary policy.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, for instance, said last month He did not know what the future holds for the city’s sanctuary policies, though a spokeswoman for his office told Vox that those policies remain in place for now. That tenuous commitment suggests that soil may be moving beyond New York City.
